How does it work?

There are many different techniques and ways of doing inner work, but ultimately it’s about setting right the foundations of our lives. We begin inside and the changes emerge in our outer life. These are some of the ways I work with people:

Parts Work

Parts work is one of the methods I use often. Informed by Internal Family Systems (IFS), parts work looks at the psyche as made up of interrelated parts. Each part of us has its own role and tries to help us in different ways. Some parts try to protect us, others try to manage our lives, and others are in deep pain and need our love and understanding—like a caring parent approaching a child.

Parts work is best used to address deep emotional wounding, is trauma-informed, and can even address some psychosomatic issues. It is a very gentle approach that prioritizes permission, gratitude, and love and relies on drawing-out an individual’s own inner wisdom and self-healing capacities.

Shadow Work / Psychodrama

Shadow work draws on the work of psychologist Carl Jung and is best used to address repressed anger, hatred, disgust, jealousy, fear, shame, or guilt. For maximum effect, I often combine shadow work with elements of psychodrama which involves creating and acting-out formative scenes from your present or past and extracting the negative messages that we took on about ourselves.

This method can be highly dynamic, energetic, and embodied. It relies on bioenergetic techniques to reach depths of the psyche and body that talking alone may never reach. — Learn more about shadow work and my shadow work groups here.

Solution-Focused

The solution-focused is an action-oriented and directive approach. Rather than focusing on problem-solving (which can subconsciously reinforce the problem) this method focuses on solutions. This method works quickly but it is not shallow. Properly done, a solution-focused approach starts with a small and easy change that’s begins a butterfly effect of deeper and more fundamental change in a person’s life.

This method works best when going inward or into the past is unproductive, overwhelming, or inaccessible. It prioritizes empowerment and breaks longstanding patterns of thought or behavior that open exciting new horizons of possibility.

Existential

The existential approach is not a formal method but a mode of working that addresses death, meaning, authenticity, and the impermanence of life. Existential work can often be a doorway to spiritual work and a gateway to the awakening process. This mode of working is best for anyone seeking deeper meaning in life, struggling with death anxiety, confronting grief and loss, or facing their own mortality.

Inner Work is Not Therapy

Unlike therapy, inner work does not view individuals as diagnoses or patients that need healing. Instead, inner work respects the innate strength, resources, and wisdom of the individual. Inner work is not about diagnoses and it is not reported to any medical insurance.

However, inner work is not meant to address severe mental health issues. While it can be done in tandem with therapy, it should not be used as a replacement when therapy is recommended.

Inner Work is the Foundation for Spiritual Work

In the 1970s, psychologist and buddhist John Welwood noticed that many seekers around him were turning to spirituality as a way to avoid addressing their deeper emotional and psychological issues. He termed this phenomenon “spiritual bypassing.”

If spiritual work is like building a tower then inner work is like laying the foundations on which that tower will stand. By healing our emotional wounds, addressing unconscious drives, and resolving the internal wars and polarities that come from ego conflict, spiritual work becomes much simpler, cleaner, and more direct.

Inner work helps us become less prone to ego-traps in which we seek spiritual advancement for superiority, adoration, or to fulfill our basic need for self-love through means other than self-love. By dealing with internal issues with the proper tools, the mind and heart naturally become calmer and spiritual growth begins to unfold naturally.